2 – Papers I’ve written this year that apparently were not in English.

Ah, the one thing that I appreciate about college is that teachers read your papers, butcher them and then let you pass. I thought that earlier this year would be the only time that I’d write something that I knew made no sense. I had to write a paper about the Kyoto Protocol for my Physical Geography (aka “apparent” Rocks for Jocks, I’ll talk about that later) class. With the uber-proper British lady. I wasn’t expecting much from the professor to be grading my paper anywho. I expected that she’d want the thing in old English or something. Heh. Or I’d have to spell words like “colour” or something. Granted, to this day I still don’t fully grasp the whole Kyoto Protocol. Apparently when I wrote the paper, I missed points. Hmm, nothing too unusual. I mean I guess that’s the reprimanding I get from being a quote whore. But somehow, I looked at the returned copy and every other word was underlined, circled, or crossed out. Lines were on the margins with words like “What?” and “I don’t understand.” I don’t understand it much either. And I passed. I believe a C+. But still I passed. (In the long run I passed Physical Geography unlike some people I sat next to,)

And I thought that my bad paper writing was over me. Along comes fall semester and my Mass Media Law class. I had to write some paper about Branzburg v. Hayes. Something about Protection of speech in the media. Heh. This paper had less time, and more random crap. I wrote it thinking I’d get a C+ based on my last crappy paper. I got this paper back and along with crossed out lines, slashes, and missing quotation marks, I got funny commentary, I got “Huh?” “What Mean?” (Which I still don’t get) “Awkward” and “Glitchy.” It sounds so weird but my paper was apparently Glitchy. Was there electric sparks emerging from my paper? Was it written in scrolling Matrix? I don’t know. After looking it all over, I got a B. What?

It makes me wonder if I could ever be a teacher; if there was a paper that made no sense I’d fail the kid. Or let the kid do a rewrite. I don’t think I’d ever just pass the kid. That’s why I’m not a teacher.

- Paz.